TARYN WORKED THE CROWD for another half hour, then swirled out of the room, calling out good-byes. Schiffer was waiting at the door with Green. Taryn had four vehicles, the largest and most ungainly and only American one being the large silver GMC Yukon Denali, which she'd acquired the day before she launched her campaign. She didn't want the right-wingers asking why she didn't "Buy American"; and if some leftie asked about the environmental impact, she'd ask, "What, you don't believe in Minnesota's ethanol economy?" In any case, the Porsche, Jag, and M5 stayed under wraps.

Leaving the house, she kissed Ellen Borders on the cheek, squeezed her husband's biceps, pointed Green, who usually rode with her, at the security car, trading places with Barb Siegel, the media fixer.

Schiffer drove, and Dannon and Green fell in behind, discreet in the gray BMW sport-utility escort vehicle.

In the car with Schiffer and Siegel, Taryn closed her eyes and said, aloud, "We understand that this news is a preliminary statement, but we certainly hope that Senator Smalls is found not responsible for this distasteful child pornography discovery. But, as long as we have to talk about unpleasant things, let me say that I bitterly resent Porter Smalls's implicit suggestion that his political opponents may be involved with this situation. I'm his only political opponent at the moment, so that was aimed at me. I'll tell Senator Smalls this: I've long been involved in child-care issues, and have devoted quite a lot of my hard-earned money to charities that help children. Need I point out that he has not been? That he should suggest this ... just totally creeps me out."

"Not 'hard-earned money,'" Schiffer said. "You inherited too much, and not everybody knows you founded your own company. Say, 'devoted a lot of my time.' And get rid of the 'totally creeps me out.' That sounds Valley girl, and you already look too Valley girl."

Taryn nodded. "Where was I ... That he should suggest this, I can only characterize as vicious. As distasteful in the extreme. And, frankly, as creepy. I would remind him that this child pornography was on his personal computer, in his personal campaign office, and if somebody placed this pornography on his computer ..."

"Personal computer ... and 'creepy' is good, because he is a little creepy," Siegel said.

"... if somebody placed this child pornography on his personal computer, and it wasn't his, then it was one of the people in his campaign office-the office that he's supposedly running. And I will tell you-I've checked, and none of my people has ever been in Porter Smalls's office. Furthermore, I'd note that what Commissioner Roux said tonight didn't say that Porter Smalls was innocent of the child pornography charge, just that there seem to be other possibilities."

"No. No. Quit after the part where you say, 'the office he's supposedly running,'" Schiffer said. "When you're done, I'll get some of the TV people together and make the point, off the record, that he's not been shown to be innocent. They'll run with that."

"The more we can hook his name to child porn, the better it'll be for us, even if he's innocent," Siegel said. "If there's a headline every day that says, 'child porn' and 'Porter Smalls,' then that wouldn't be all bad."

"It was better the other way," Schiffer said, "because we had him beat. Now this adds a complication."

"I will beat him," Taryn said. "Where are we doing the press conference?"

"I thought the front lawn, inside the gate," Schiffer said. "There's a nice sort of amphitheater thing there on the lawn."

"You think we could get them around by the pool?" Taryn asked.

"Well, we could, but why would we?"

"Because it looks rich. The point is, if this hurts me, I'll be hurt with the more conservative voters out here," Taryn said. "The richer ones. I want to make the point, 'I'm one of you.' I've got the liberals no matter what."

Schiffer thought about that for a moment, and then said, "Yeah. That's good."

Taryn said, "That fuckin' Roux. What the heck was she doing?"

"Didn't even get a heads-up," Schiffer said. "Well, when you get to Washington ..."

THEY WERE ALMOST to the house when Schiffer said, "You know, I read a lot of history. One thing that I've noticed is that people who go a long way in politics seem to have some kind of destiny. Opponents die, seats open up when they need them, they get an appointment that's critical ... This thing with Smalls. This is a test, but you will beat him. It's your destiny. You do ten years, work really hard at it ... You'd be a hot, smart, rich, law-and-order Democrat, with loads of experience, and still young... . I mean, who knows where you could go."

Taryn didn't laugh. No false modesty here; just a rich young blond woman with a burning case of narcissistic personality disorder. She did say, "We may be getting ahead of ourselves. Let's get Smalls out of the way first."

"I'm just saying: it's your destiny," Schiffer said, looking across at Taryn in the dark. "You'd be a fool not to ride it hard as you can."

CHAPTER 9

Lucas spent the afternoon chasing campaign committee members from Kidd's list. By early evening, he had found and interviewed ten of the twelve.

Two were out of town, one of those two would be back the next day, the other, not for a week and a half, having begun a hunting trip to Northern Ontario. Lucas was curious about that, because the timing seemed odd. He had a conference with Cory Makovsky, the gossip in the distribution center, who said, quietly, "He's being fired."

"Ah. When was he last in here?"

"Couple weeks ago. He was in charge of lawn signs, and the word is, there were a lot fewer lawn signs than the campaign paid for. Of course, it's hard to know for sure, but the rumor is, we're short about ten thousand signs at two dollars each. He went north before Bob Tubbs disappeared."

Lucas crossed the sign guy off his list.

LUCAS ARRANGED THE INTERVIEWS through Helen Roman, the office manager, who also found Lucas a small room with a desk and two chairs. He lined up those people who were working that day, the ten-of-twelve. He asked all of them the same questions, explaining that he was investigating the presumptive murder of Tubbs, but he focused on the four names isolated by Kidd.

MacGuire, a big, square guy with short curly red hair, denied any knowledge of anything that Tubbs had been doing, and was out-front with his gay issues. But, he said, he had no real problem working with Smalls, as conservative as Smalls was. "Senator Smalls is conservative on social issues, and I lean the other way, except on guns-I'm pro-gun, to use the shorthand. But I'm very conservative on financial and economic issues. Something has to be done to get the country back on an even economic keel. That's what I work on for the senator. Social issues, I'm not so involved with that. He is against gay marriage, and I'm for it, but we joke about it, you know? He's not really anti-gay, per se-he's got several gays on his staff, men and women both, and when one of them got married to her partner, he sent along a nice wedding present. So ... it's complicated. But I think of him as a friend. And there are a hell of a lot of worse guys in the Senate than Smalls, and Taryn Grant doesn't seem a hell of a lot more understanding about gay issues than he is."

Lucas dug for opinions about other staffers, and MacGuire shrugged him off.

"This whole thing is a mystery-I have no idea who'd want to set the senator up. I mean, on the staff. Maybe we've got a spy somewhere, I don't know. But it's not me."

"We need to know who it is, if he or she is there," Lucas said. "That person's life could be in danger from the same people who killed Tubbs ... unless he or she did it. Then, that'd mean you're working with a cold-blooded killer."

"Okay. I'll think about it," MacGuire said. "I'm not lying to you here, I really don't know-but I'll think about it, and ask around."

RUDY HOLLY, the conspiracy theory guy, thought Tubbs had been taken off because he'd been behind the dirty trick involving the porn. "The Republicans in this state rarely do well ... but now, all of a sudden, they are doing well. The Dems are frantic. I believe that there's a force out there, funded by union money, that is putting pressure on people ... probably set up the porn thing, then killed Tubbs to cover up. It seems so obvious... ."

He went on like that for a while, and before he was done, Lucas had dismissed him as being ineffectually goofy, although his ideas about the killing were roughly the same as Lucas's own. Holly said he had no idea who on the staff might have been involved with Tubbs, or might be working as a spy.

SALLY FEY SHRANK in her office chair when Lucas asked the question, her shoulders turning in, her neck seeming almost to shorten, as though she were trying to pull her head into a turtle shell. She looked up at Lucas and said, "Robert and I had an ambiguous relationship... ."

She was twisting her hands, as she spoke. She was a slight woman, who might have been attractive if she'd done anything to make it so. But she didn't: her clothing-she wore dresses-might have come from the 1950s. She wore neither jewelry nor makeup, but did wear square, clunky shoes. She looked at Lucas from under her eyebrows, and at an angle, as though she were worried that he might strike her.

Lucas tried to be as soft as he could be; it wasn't his natural attitude. "Ambiguous ... how? Was this a sexual relationship?"

"Yes. Twice. I mean, we ... yes, we slept together twice. When he went away, wherever he went, it's hard to believe that he might be dead, because he was so upbeat when I last saw him... . Anyway, I thought maybe the police would ask me about him, but nobody did, and I didn't know what to do about that. I was scared... . I didn't know what happened to him, and when he didn't call me Saturday or Sunday, I thought he wasn't interested anymore."

"When was the last time you heard from him?" Lucas asked.

"Friday night, about ... nine o'clock," she said.

"And when did you last see him?"